Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday March 10, 2014 @04:55PM
from the Is-this-thing-on? dept.

colinneagle writes "Speaking at the SXSW Conference recently, Dr. Peter W. Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, recalled one U.S. official who was 'about to negotiate cybersecurity with China' asking him to explain what the term 'ISP' (Internet Service Provider) means. This wasn't the only example of this lack of awareness. 'That's like going to negotiate with the Soviets and not knowing what "ICBM" means,' Dr. Singer said. 'And I've had similar experiences with officials from the UK, China and Abu Dhabi.' Similarly, Dr. Singer recalled one account in which Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the U.S. Homeland Security Department from 2009 to 2013, admitted that she didn't use email 'because she just didn't think it was useful.' 'A Supreme Court justice also told me "I haven't got round to email yet" — and this is someone who will get to vote on everything from net neutrality to the NSA negotiations,' Dr. Singer said."

It's not the government. These people have access to all the modern conveniences via their jobs. They have chosen not to learn anything about them which would be O.K. if it wasn't critical to their job performance.

These people have access to all the modern conveniences via their jobs. They have chosen not to learn anything about them which would be O.K. if it wasn't critical to their job performance.

Actually the SCOTUS has shown they are more than willing to learn about something required for them to do their jobs.

Go back a few years when they had a specific case about video games and free speech in 2011. They set up a lab and played the ultra-violent games for a few days, both online and off, to help make a decision. (All of them agreed with the free speech, two dissented saying it was not regulating speech, but was regulating the sale of products.)

Historically the judges have been willing to get their hands dirty and view the gritty details when they are called to review them for a case. They have traveled to remote locations, dug through physical evidence, and gotten their hands dirty. They may not be hardcore gamers or telecom experts, but when it comes to ruling on the law they are making determinations based on the exact wording on the law. Such a decision can be made based on reviewing the facts, reviewing details provided by experts, and looking at the specific items enough to satisfy their opinions.

These people have access to all the modern conveniences via their jobs. They have chosen not to learn anything about them which would be O.K. if it wasn't critical to their job performance.

Actually the SCOTUS has shown they are more than willing to learn about something required for them to do their jobs.

Go back a few years when they had a specific case about video games and free speech in 2011. They set up a lab and played the ultra-violent games for a few days, both online and off, to help make a decision. (All of them agreed with the free speech, two dissented saying it was not regulating speech, but was regulating the sale of products.)

Historically the judges have been willing to get their hands dirty and view the gritty details when they are called to review them for a case. They have traveled to remote locations, dug through physical evidence, and gotten their hands dirty. They may not be hardcore gamers or telecom experts, but when it comes to ruling on the law they are making determinations based on the exact wording on the law. Such a decision can be made based on reviewing the facts, reviewing details provided by experts, and looking at the specific items enough to satisfy their opinions.

... which makes the shocking naïveté they've shown in certain opinions pertaining to campaign finance even more unsettling.

It's not the government. These people have access to all the modern conveniences via their jobs. They have chosen not to learn anything about them which would be O.K. if it wasn't critical to their job performance.

Maybe it's time to have education requirements for senators, congresspeeps, Ambassadors and anyone who has to deal with laws or other countries. They would be required to keep up with what is going on in the world, tech, social and whatever. Anything less is just hurting us in this day & age, seeing as the world (tech wise, and whatever) moves faster then it did back when.

Oh ya, drug test those peeps also so they can see what it's like for us.

I'm happy to give them a break until they assume the authority to make decisions that depend on understanding technology. Once they do that they have the duty to be knowledgeable and competent. Anyone aspiring to such authority should be preparing and educating themselves.

I once attended a seminar by one of the heads of emergency response from the city that's often portrayed as the world's biggest terrorism target. He was going on about communications equipment that is stored away for use after a low-yield nuke detonation. I asked the speaker whether the equipment and storage facilities are shielded against EMP. He asked me what "EMP" is.

Nope. Even Trinity had a damaging EMP, and it was not an unforeseen effect (they shielded against it, but not sufficiently to prevent all damage). It's just that high-altitude detonations yield more of their total energy as an EMP and less as a fireball and shockwave, and that at high altitude they are able to cause EMP damage over a much wider area. With a modern warhead, even at low altitude you would have an appreciable EMP.

2. ONE legislator **writing a letter** that does nothing more than **ask** for **another agency** to consider regulating something

false equivalence all over...1 is way different than 2. 1 is a baseball bat to the head...the other is...

3rd, everyone who understands the issue agrees Net Neutrality is the right course....only corporations & their GOP sockpuppets oppose net neutrality. However, ***regulating Bitcoin is a debatable policy*** Many would want some kind of government resopnse. I'm not saying its a good idea, or that i agree with the letter.

1 is different than 2...your comparison is full of logical error, false equivalence, trolling, and willful ignorance

For my dad, the hard drive is "memory". It bugs me when I hear that, but I'm not going to be pedantic and try to correct him either. I figure he's doing pretty good with computers for a 75 year old, and I can interpret what he means.

It actually bugs me more that RAM is referred to as "memory" which is and should be a very generic term.

If anything the harddisk is probably a better candidate for the term "memory" than RAM is. A harddisk is what ultimately must store the data permanently and recall it. RAM exists to make certain frequently used data quicker to access, and it "forgets" when the computer is powered off. Granted this is basically equivalent to short-term memory, but I think long-term memory is more what people think of when they think of the generic term "memory".

It actually bugs me more that RAM is referred to as "memory" which is and should be a very generic term.

If anything the harddisk is probably a better candidate for the term "memory" than RAM is. A harddisk is what ultimately must store the data permanently and recall it. RAM exists to make certain frequently used data quicker to access, and it "forgets" when the computer is powered off. Granted this is basically equivalent to short-term memory, but I think long-term memory is more what people think of when they think of the generic term "memory".

Thank you for demonstrating exactly why I choose not be pedantic and correct him. It would get me nowhere, and simply annoy my dad.;-)

The whole point of my post was that your dad did was not actually incorrect to call a hard drive memory.

I got your point just fine. While hard drive space IS technically long term memory of course, when most people hear "I just upgraded my computer memory", they assume you're talking about RAM, not a bigger hard drive. My Dad is not computer literate enough to understand that there's a difference between the two, and so uses them interchangeably.

Arguing against common colloquial usage of common terms is a fruitless exercise. It's sort of like insisting that only white or grey hats deserve the moniker "hack

I have this conversation fairly regularly with people born after 1990. Like those born before 1965, kids these days don't need to know anything about computers so they don't. The main difference is that the old timers at least have the excuse of not using a computer of some sort for nearly every waking hour of their lives.

The guy who had to learn what an ISP was, or the guy who didn't know and didn't ask and made government policy on it anyway?

But if you came from the distant future, like Mr Scott, you might be utterly baffled by what cantankerous garbage we have to put up with, despite our smug feeling our $800 smart phone is the latest and greatest - looks like a glorified paperweight to them.

You mean SUGGESTED postures - not approved. I wonder how many desks you've seen than fit that role?

(looks down)

At least one.

And I wonder why you singled out John McCain?

Because he's one of the most powerful people in the United States, he has a significant hand in legislation affecting the future of the internet, sits on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs....and HE'S NEVER USED A COMPUTER.

Their ability to scoop up such a trove of data on our use of the Internet seems really fearsome, but what is their actual ability to make use of the data? They could use their tools plus the US global enforcement powers to nail Internet frauds like the Cryptolocker ransomware, thereby redeeming the bad press they been getting since Snowdon. That they are not doing so tells me that they probably cannot do so.

An intelligence agency doesn't (necessarily) do policework. They may (or may not!) drop a tip to the FBI when they come across something big, but for the most part the NSA doesn't care in the least about "minor" crimes like ransomware or carding or murder. Until something reaches the level of impacting actual national security, the NSA merely observes.

Also, don't mistake the useless fucks in Washington for the geniuses (not used sarc

Their ability to scoop up such a trove of data on our use of the Internet seems really fearsome, but what is their actual ability to make use of the data? They could use their tools plus the US global enforcement powers to nail Internet frauds like the Cryptolocker ransomware, thereby redeeming the bad press they been getting since Snowdon. That they are not doing so tells me that they probably cannot do so.

Publicly they come across as all inept and easily baffled by the vast volumes of data they have. That's the cover I'd assume if I wanted to convince you not to be too worried.

I would be concerned if it were effectively spying on us. If they really had the superpowers we fear, they could almost for free regain most of the public confidence they lost in the past year by nailing the Cryptolocker or Target perpetrators. And this would not be redoing routine police work, but attacking a problem that police, even if Nigeria had them, are clueless at solving.

Ahhhh, I see now... Hey, look over there, an early-morning all you can eat buffet restaurant!

Ahem. That taken care of, I move we lower the age of candidacy for all public offices to 18. Do I hear a second?

Just keep in mind these departments and heads are generally chock full of people who do know their arse from a hole in the ground and they generally are the ones who actually meet with as-aware counter parts for the actual details. Mucky-mucks just zero in on the microphone, for a speech or two and then the bar for after the worker bees have been lined up to get the fiddly bits all right.

I'm looking at you, Kathleen Sebelius. The healthcare.gov fiasco is just one obvious symptom. The world depends utterly on science and technology, but is being guided by people who I will describe politely as "technically challenged."

We've seen the results recently, and they're not pretty. I think our democracy itself is going to have to go through a thorough upgrade to remain viable. IQ tests for politicians? No, it's not egalitarian. It's not the American way. It may, however, allow the country to survive in something like its present form over the next century.

You know of an IQ Test that can measure corruptibility? I don't think the problem with our elected officials is generally a lack of intelligence; it's a lack of character and responsibility to their actual electorate, rather than the highest bidder.

I don't think it's fair to say Kathleen Sebelius was technically challenged because the healthcare.gov website didn't work on time. Even if it were her fault, that the healthcare.gov launch went badly, it wouldn't be because of her technical skills, it would be because of her managerial skills.

What, she drafted the law that said the government would magick up a website in a few months from rainbows and moonbeams?

The law set hard deadlines for a technology project nobody had ever tried before and that was just one of the signs that it was drafted by someone who had no idea how technological projects work in (or out of) government. The results would have been equally horrifying if congress had passed "The Moon Shot Act of 1961" after JFK's speech with a deadline of colonizing the

It's not that it can't do useful things for everyone; it's that you have to balance that against things like time wasted. For the head of a major agency with private secretaries and aids at her call, checking and sending emails might not be the best use of her time.

Okay, the cybersecurity negotiator ignorance is bad, the rest less so.

I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.
- Donald Knuth

The role of Supreme Court Justice is also "to be on the bottom of things". It is possible to understand enough about email to make good judgements about it without using it on a daily basis. The justices have to make weekly about subjects which they have absolutely no interaction with in their normal day-to-day life. From technical to finance to agriculture, no one can possibly be an expert on all the issues they hear. It is their job to constantly learn enough about a subject to know what is important from a legal and constitutional point of view. If they are failing to do this, then that is a legitimate complaint. The fact that they weren't familiar with "common knowledge" technologies before encountering them in court, or haven't chosen to incorporate them into their life isn't.

is not always the one with the knowledge about the product but the one with the people skills to manipulate the situation to their and your advantage these people usually have a very knowledgable person beside them who has poor people skills due to their single subject focus

I retract the above statement. At least in regard to this particular topic. The blog post does link more than just that one story into a theme. Still, I would not have brought it up unless I'd seen that kind of thing quite a bit on Slashdot lately.

The concept of email is simple: It's just really fast mail, except that the security sucks. For the post office to be as bad, it would have to copy each letter in each building and vehicle the letter entered and keep the copies poorly guarded for years. Seriously, a justice can quickly learn enough about email to judge sensibly. That doesn't mean they will, but it is simple enough to learn. The bigger issue is the excessive influence of money in all areas of government.

Think about it, next time you wonder how on earth someone could come up with a law that is so far away from reality that it hurts. These people are the same the make laws concerning computers, the internet and everything connected to it. Most of the time taken verbatim from sources that have a rather intense interest in certain laws (aka "lobbying groups"), without even having the slightest idea what their laws will entail.

And this is why the whole crap is in the sorry state it is in today, with laws that are not executable, laws that make no sense, laws you cannot heed and laws that benefit a minority at the expense of everyone else.

And it's only half as dangerous as long as it's just domestic. It gets downright scary, though, when international laws get negotiated. Because one thing is certain: Whatever country can field the ones that can spell TCP/IP without too many accidents will be the one-eyed king amongst the blind.

Even though I'd fear that he'll just be the one eyed dummy that's being remote controlled by some corporate lawyer who DOES have an idea what he's doing.

Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the U.S. Homeland Security Department from 2009 to 2013, admitted that she didn't use email 'because she just didn't think it was useful

No, she knew how every email was scanned, so there was no way in hell she was going to use plain ol' email. She is just using the "I'm old so I don't use computer stuff" excuse to cover the real reason.

"Internet service provider" is used to describe a provider of connectivity from an end user to the internet at large. "Internet service provider" is also used to describe a provider of a service accessible only over the internet. On more than one occasion I've seen it used one way where I was expecting the other way, i.e. I didn't know what the writer meant, and I had to find some other clarifying statement.

At least the government official asked. It's better to look like a fool before the negotiation than after. And since acronyms can mean different things in different contexts, the example cited wasn't even as dumb as it might seem at first glace.

I think one of the major issues here is that voting has become a joke. "We" (and I mean the collective American people, not just myself and the others responsible for the next statement) vote for these idiots based on the fact that they have someone sending amusing tweets and know how to talk in circles about things. We definitely don't vote for them based on anything reasonable (like experience, previous ACTUAL accomplishments, etc). If we want that to stop, we need to stop voting for prom queens and vote for a leader.

I find this just a bit ironic, laughing at him for not knowing the terminology, while having literally no conception of what his job is or what it entails.

Should the guy know what an ISP is? Yeah, sure. Maybe he's not competent because he doesn't know. But do you have any conception of what else his job involves? Do you know who else might have been sent to do it? Do you know who else is on the team, buttressing his weaknesses? Do you have even the faintest conception of what it even means to "negotiate cybersecurity with China"?

Government is a job, like any other job, in that it involves some highly specialized and specific requirements that look like irrelevant trivia to people not doing it. You're all programmers here, and I'm sure you get irritated when somebody dismisses some vastly complex task as a "simple matter of programming". It seems a little rich to be so unaware that the same goes for everybody else's job, even a "government job". The overwhelming majority of what you hear about "the government" is frank BS. I'd feel a lot safer if the voters took a bit more effort to understand what the government actually does and why. Hearing the same kind of Fox News-level anti-government propaganda from this supposedly-smarter echo chamber does not fill me with confidence./dons asbestos undies

Politicians, judges, and other people in power are rarely young. So it stands to reason that they're "behind the times", though it is outrageous that they don't educate themselves on the issues and technologies they're supposed to oversee and negotiate about.

The simple fact of the matter is politicians are idiots who don't understand anything beyond getting bought off by lobbyists, screwing the public, and spinning things so they get elected again. I firmly believe that less than 10% of the politicians in the world are actually intelligent people out to do the best for society as a whole; I believe the other 90% are power-tripping freakazoids who don't understand anything more than "I want to be the boss."

Most of them would take a role as dictator in a heartbeat if they were given the chance.

It's not THAT surprising. She is a lawyer and Law Schools tend to beat common sense out of people pretty much the way that firefighter training beats the survival instinct out of people. It's pretty common for a lawyer to insist that a plain English sentence which would not be misinterpreted by anyone (other than a lawyer) has multiple possible meanings. She asked to have a term defined... even though she probably heard it before and probably used it herself. But in an "official" conversation her lawyer training kicked in and she asked to have the term defined "exactly." Lawyers can be that way when they don't rise above their training to learn how to communicate effectively while remaining precise.

From the Declaration of Independence "... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...."

The Founders did not establish a Democracy, and you will find nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, The US constitution or the Bill of Rights the word "democracy" as they were actually against it for they knew it leads to oligarchy, which we are much closer to today.

Those who might argue the the Declaration fo Independence is not law, they are correct. But what they may fail to understand is its more important and more powerful than law, as it is the spirit and intent of all valid and legitimate law in the US. And any law that violates this is not law any more than you can have a legal contract to murder someone. The job of a US judge is to deal with the exception of law that do not fit the spirit and intent of the founders as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

The founders in writing the Declaration of Independence fired all government personnel past present and future who violate the spirit and intent of the founders establishing this republic. Once informed of being fired any (people funded) government employee continuing in such position is committing and act of impersonating such an employee and stealing funds from the peoples funding of government.

Yes the government has been hijacked. And the Founders even gave real life examples written in the Declaration of Independence, that the spirit and intent of the founders would not be misconstrued.

The correction is simple, the taxpayers should be given voice where the individual taxes they pay they have say in how those taxes are to be used wile voting is a limited democratic supplement to the Republic in hiring who can best optimize the allocation budgeting of the people in generating team work benefits the people share in (the constraint of teamwork benefits is where taxpayers can chose). By chose the taxpayers can allocate all or some portion of their taxes to "decided by government - as a funding buffer" for which voters also influence the direction of such funding. The tax processors (who may be your neighbors) simple allocate funding as per taxpayers instructions.

Simple solution of putting control of the funding of government bank account in the hands of those it should be in, rather than the employees who have proven they cannot handle the bank account properly, and fail to budget while lying to the people in an illusion of being elected (approx 50% of the qualified voters did not vote this last election, making the "NO VOTE" the actual winner of the election. What ever government wants funding for they have to notify the taxpayers and request it.....meaning they have to be transparent!

The liars, cheats and warmongers who have hijacked the government do not like this solution. The Why should be obvious! These lazy have no real interest in the communication tools technology has provided for there scope of communication does not include the people, but just the few participating in the hijack. IOsolating oneself from the critical public for which you are supposed to work for is very telling of intent.

This is in some ways an advantage--SCOTUS is supposed to change slowly. But it also results in crazy rulings at times, like the idea that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in who you call. The judges who made that decision a few decades ago grew up when there were still *shared phone lines* between neighboring houses.

/. is a place wherein denizens brag about using their acoustic couplers, or bbs'ing at 300 baud or computing in the snow, uphill both ways while editing inodes by hand with a magnet. You take a pretty big leap when you guess that "most" people don't know about an outdated technology.

/. is a place wherein denizens brag about using their acoustic couplers, or bbs'ing at 300 baud or computing in the snow, uphill both ways while editing inodes by hand with a magnet. You take a pretty big leap when you guess that "most" people don't know about an outdated technology.

Not really, at least not for a *particular* *very* outdated technology--there was likely to be a sizable minority who would know and inform the rest, which is what happened. But why would I deliberately make a point in a way which was less clear to everyone else?

There are STILL party lines. I work for a phone company, they are fairly common on farms. (Think of the elderly parents still living in the farmhouse and the kids living in a new house on the same lot, running the farm and taking car of their parents.

There are state Supreme Courts, and other countries have them too, so unless you are going to type out the entire thing, SCOTUS is more specific. Are you opposed to all acronyms, or just this one for some reason?

In general I am, they are far to often used to make people feel, superior, just like other jargon. Just because you don't know what ISP means doesn't mean you don't know what an Internet Service Provider is, or does. The purpose of language, for me at least is to communicate, acronyms in general only make it harder.

You could say the US supreme court. It is simple, and clearer to larger set of people.

Which supreme court?New York City Supreme Court,New York State Supreme Court,

and that is just one city and one state. we have 50 more states and a lot of cities duplicating names.

My personal favorite. is 3 local towns 3 zip codes . Each town has a Winter Street. All three Winter Streets are within 5 miles of each other and don't even come close to touching in any way shape or form.

The Courts are supposed to weigh cases based on the facts and arguments presented, and not so much on their own personal experiences. As a matter of fact if a member of the court is too closely involved in a case, they're supposed to recuse themselves. Therefore one does not need to use email to listen to arguments involving email.

At least that's the theory. Of course personal experiences and biases do enter into their decision making, but the rulings are to be made on the case before the court.

The Courts are supposed to weigh cases based on the facts and arguments presented, and not so much on their own personal experiences.

Conextual knowledge is usually required to make good decisions. Without that context, decisions are likely to be random. Yes, the lawyers should present information to develop context, but where to start? Do they have to start with 1 + 1 = 2 ? Obviously not. So what assumptions should they make about the knowledge of a judge? Probably they start with what a ordinary person would know; but if a judge knows less than an ordinary person?

In a way, I sort of enjoy the idea of a man who knows everything about constitutional law and nothing about email making decisions based on two people (and a number of lower court decisions) arguing about email. It's like asking someone who never saw Star Wars to review TPM - at least he doesn't have a bias.

Should a judge learn to fly a passenger jet if there is a pilot on trial for negligence? - Think about it, judges are there to listen to testimony and make decisions based on the facts presented to them, they are essentially laymen in everything but the law. So they don't use email, they probably also don't use slashdot, twitter, facebook, youtube, need I list them all? - Should the judge use all of them before he makes a decision on a case that involves a computer?